Games That Children Play
by Rising From The Flames
Summary: "In the end it was just like all fairytales, merely a story that has to come to an end. As children we had always played knights and dragons and happily-ever-afters, and in the end we could not let go of our games, even as adults."


**This is for Lady's Writing School Tryouts. My inspiration for this one was a picture of a tree silhouetted against an orange sunset. I would post the link but its not cooperating. **

**Also, a quick note so no one's confused, Aunt Andy is Andromeda Tonks, Teddy Grandma. I just felt like Andromeda was a big name for little kids, and then Aunt Andy just stuck.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter in any way, shape, form or alternate dimension.**

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There was a tree in the backyard of the house where I grew up. It was thick and plush, stretching out its branches far from its short trunk. I remember that the leaves were a deep green and the bark worn smooth from all the years of being climbed. But in my mind it lives on as a silhouette, etched into a background of a setting sun. You might say that was where it all began and where it ended and where all the middle bits took place. Somehow that tree seemed to dominate our childhood, its branches hanging over every moment of our lives. Dominique even gave it a name at one point, though I can't recall what it was. It was underneath that tree that we first truly spoke.

I cannot say when I met Teddy for the first time, he had just always been there; at all the family gatherings and whenever Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny came over for dinner. He was always there and we were always friends, except for the times when we hated each other, which were surprisingly frequent. Once more cousins were born and the family grew, we spent more and more time together as we were the oldest and it was expected. He could make me laugh at any time. Sometimes all he had to do was change the color of his hair. And I would tell him stories; stories of princes and dragons, of evil witches and happily-ever-afters, the kind that Aunt Hermione used to tell me. Then, when we got tired of talking, we would jump up and play. He would be the dragon and I would be the knight, ridding to battle on my imaginary horse. Sometimes he would pull out his broom and one of us would be the witch, while the other would climb up to the top of the tree and fight to free the princess. Looking back I can't help but smile at how easy everything was as children.

Time was a stranger to me when I was little. All I knew was that daytime was bright and night was dark. We did not play outside in the dark. In between there were mealtimes, where mama or Aunt Ginny or Aunt Andy would call us in to eat before we were released into the outdoors once more.

The first time I got a glimpse of what it meant to grow up was when Teddy went away to Hogwarts. That, to me, was the day that childhood began to end and adulthood started to circle overhead, watching me like a hawk does its prey. At first I cried, but when that did not bring Teddy back or get me to Hogwarts I tried a different tactic. For days I refused to come out of my room. At first maman brought my food to me. She would sit on my bed with me, stroke my hair, ask what was wrong. But after the first couple of days she made me come downstairs to eat with the rest of the family.

A week into my self-enforced solitude there was a knock on my door.

"Go away!" I shouted.

"You go away!" Teddy shouted back. I leaped off the bed and threw the door open. There he stood, bright blue hair sticking up in every direction, a smile lighting up his face.

"Race you to the tree." He said, and then he was off. It only took a second before I was chasing after him. Somehow I made it to the tree first. I suspected that he had let me win. We fell down against the trunk, laughing. Everything was okay again; I had Teddy back and we were laughing under our tree.

"So what's going on?" He finally asked. "Harry says you won't leave your room."

"They wouldn't let me go to Hogwarts," I said, crossing my arms and pouting.

"It'll only be two more years, and then you'll be going too." He said comfortingly.

"Two years is forever."

"It'll fly by," he promised, tousling my hair. I pushed him. He pushed me back. Soon we were laughing again.

"I have to go soon. I have to be back at Hogwarts by three. Normally they don't let students leave on the weekends, but McGonagall made a special exception for me." I felt my heart sink and tears stinging my eyes.

"You have to go back?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, confused by the question. Of course he had to go back. Suddenly I was angry at him. How dare he let me think he had come home for good. "But I'll be back for Christmas," he added, looking at me.

"Okay," I whispered, then bent down and kissed him on the cheek. I was running towards the house before I realized what I had just done: I had kissed Teddy Lupin. If I hadn't been too embarrassed to look back, I would have seen a pleased smile on his now bright red face.

That fall was the longest I had ever known. I would run to the window every morning to see if it had snowed, for maman had told that when it snowed it would be Christmas. When the snow finally fell, Teddy arrived a week later. We ran out to the backyard and made snowmen and snow angels. It was almost as if nothing had happened. We laughed and played just as we always had, but the silences in between were different. They were longer, more awkward, as if we knew that our relationship was slowly changing but neither of us was old enough yet to understand how. Inside daddy joked with Aunt Ginny about how maybe we would get married some day and then Teddy would truly be a part of the family.

Time went by slowly now that I didn't have Teddy to play with. I sometimes played with Dominique and Louis, but they seemed so much younger than me at the time and they weren't teddy. Sometimes the other cousins would come over, but most of them were no more than babies and cried too much.

The night before I was to go to Hogwarts I didn't sleep; I was too excited. We met up with Teddy on the platform, but he didn't hug me and spin me around like he usually did. Instead he said hi and awkwardly shook my hand, looking around all the while to see if anyone was watching. The moment we were on the train he scampered off to sit with his friends and I was left to find a compartment on my own. That year he hardly spoke to me at all. At first I tried to talk to him, even going so far as to corner him while he was studying in the library, but he always managed to brush me off, keeping a furtive eye out to see if any of his friends were watching. My friends often wondered what it was that I cried about late at night, but after weeks of asking and getting no response they stopped. When I asked them about it later they told me they had figured out what was going on on their own. Finally one of them told me that Teddy wasn't worth and I should just give up. At first I refused to listen, but then I started to see that no matter what I did, he refused to talk to me. He was simply too embarrassed to be friends with a first year. Somehow, in growing up, we had found that gap where suddenly two years seems like the biggest difference in the world. So I took to ignoring him.

That summer he tried to talk to me, tried to apologize, but I was no longer the little girl that would follow him no matter what. I continued to ignore him.

By the beginning of my third year the ice had started to melt. We were talking again. It would be a stretch to say we were friends, but we didn't avoid each other. He no longer had any problems talking to me in front of his friends, although there was one time when I overheard them teasing him about me.

In my fifth year I got my first boyfriend. He was nice and sometimes he would make me laugh, but it was never as easy as with Teddy. Still, we stayed together for three months. Every time I would start getting bored and think about breaking it off I would catch Teddy glaring at him and a happy warmth would spread through my stomach.

That summer I was sitting under the tree working on an essay for professor Longbottom when Teddy walked over and plopped down next to me.

"Hey," I said, glancing up briefly.

"Hey." We were both silent for a long time. I tried to write, but found I could no longer concentrate.

"How's you're boyfriend?" He asked. I was so startled by the suddenness of the question that I just stared at him for a moment.

"We broke up," I said once my voice would cooperate. Then his lips were on mine, hard and desperate. I sat frozen, unsure how to react. Before I even understood what was going on he had stood up and was walking away. It took me a moment to regain control of my thoughts but once I did I was up and running, chasing after him.

"Hey!" I called when I was a few feet away. "What the hell was that?' He stopped but didn't turn around. His hair shone golden in the sun.

"You don't just kiss someone and then walk away." I continued, my words losing steam as he continued to face away from me.

"Do you hate me?" He asked.

"What?" Once again my mind went blank. Of all the things I had been expecting him to say, that was not one of them.

"We never hang out anymore, we rarely talk. You didn't even kiss me back. Do you hate me?" He turned around. His eyes were hard and cold, but there was something about the slope of his shoulders that made him look fragile, broken.

"You surprised me," I said, suddenly defensive.

"But you still didn't kiss me back."

"Because you surprised me! Maybe, if you had given me a chance, I would have." Sometimes he was infuriating, and I could never figure out why. I took a step forward, staring him down. He held his ground. Something akin to hope flickered across his eyes. I reached out and took his hand. Slowly he bent down and pressed his lips to mind once again, gently, hesitantly. This time I kissed him back.

That summer was the best I had had in a long time. It was almost like when we were little. We spent almost every day together, sitting under the tree, talking, playing Quidditch. He could still make me laugh no matter what mood I was in and in the evenings, with the sun setting behind the trees and his head lay on my lap, I would tell him the fairytales we used to play. He was my prince charming, riding up on a broom with ever-changing hair to save me from the dragon's lair.

It wasn't until the last week of break that I realized I would have to say goodbye; last year had been Teddy's final year at Hogwarts. The goodbye was hard, but we promised to write frequently. At first I drove my friends crazy, always sneaking off to write to Teddy, or to read the letter he had sent me but soon they got used to it. My last two years at Hogwarts passed in a blur of classes and sitting by the lake watching the giant squid with my friends.

When I graduated I got a job at the ministry in the department of magical law enforcement. I saw Teddy almost every day. We would meet for lunch, or after work. We frequently took long walks through the park on the weekend. It seemed perfect. I remember a conversation I had with Rose while she was home during winter break. She had said that our relationship was completely foolproof. Teddy and I had known each other for so long we had already found all the little quirks that annoyed us; we had already worked through all the issues and complications that arise in a relationship. But maybe in the end we were too wise for our own good, for a foolproof relationship has no defenses against those who think themselves clever.

Two years after graduation I moved in with Teddy. Everything was split equally. I got half the closet, half the shelf in the bathroom, half the space in the fridge. There was no haggling or arguing about who owned what or that we weren't leaving each other enough space on the bookshelf. We certainly fought, but it was always about smaller, sillier things, if those even exist. The fighting was part of who were, part of what our relationship had always been, and they always ended with a kiss. The years went by and I watched my cousins graduate one by one. They all took jobs, some of them at the ministry. Teddy's and my fights grew less frequent, spreading out thin across the weeks. Grandma Molly, now stooped with age, kept asking me when the wedding was, and I always told her soon; it would come soon. We just needed a little more time. But the truth was, neither of us had really thought about; it just didn't seem like the right thing. So we continued on our daily routine. As the months went by no ring appeared, and secretly I was glad. I was doing my best to ignore it but I knew that our relation was fragile; all it would take was a gust of wind to blow it apart.

To everyone's surprise, Rose was the first to announce that she was getting married. Uncle Ron's reaction to her fiancé, Scorpius, was priceless.

"What?!" He had shouted.

"Dear." Aunt Hermione said sternly, glaring at him.

"But he's a – "

"Ron." Her voice was reaching a dangerous calmness.

"But a Malfoy," he spluttered.

"Ronald!" He had continue to mutter to himself but he gave the couple his blessing and Rose manage to weasel a real smile out of him later that evening. Throughout dinner everyone kept sneaking glances at Teddy and me when they thought we weren't looking, but we ignored them.

In the rush of wedding plans and preparations over the next year it was easy to forget the growing silence between Teddy and me. It wasn't an awkward silence, or an angry silence, it was simply an emptiness. As I lay in bed on the eve of the wedding I tried to remember the last time we had fought and was surprised to find that I couldn't. Suddenly the space between us on the mattress seemed to be able fit worlds in its hollow chasm.

At the wedding we were all smiles and energy. Teddy helped with the final touches to the decoration while I helped Rose get ready. We held hands throughout the ceremony and when they kissed Teddy's arm found its way across my shoulders. Then there was music and dancing and laughter. I danced with every single male relative and then some. I spun around and around in circles with Lily, the baby of the family, although by now she was almost twenty-five. A slow song came on and I found myself in Teddy's arms, my head resting on his chest as we swayed to the music. For a moment everything was perfect. I could pretend that the silence had never existed. I looked up at him, staring into his eyes, running my hand through his fiery red hair and found that I felt nothing. I didn't know how or when, but at some point the feelings had faded until we were merely going through the motions, pretending to be in love. In the end it was just like all fairytales, merely a story that has to come to an end. As children we had always played knights and dragons and happily-ever-afters, and in the end we could not let go of our games, even as adults.

How Ironic, I thought, that this should be our last dance, at the wedding that grandma Molly never got from us. I took Teddy's hand and led him out of the pavilion, down the path and out the gate. I could tell from the way his eyes never left me that he knew what was going to happen. Together we disaparated.

The tree stood strong and firm, just like I remembered it. I wasn't sure why I had decided to come here, it just felt like the right place to be. The sun had already set beyond the horizon, but its dying rays still lit up skies with a fiery orange making the tree look like little more a silhouette. I turned to Teddy, his hair dark as night. I stood up on my toes and kissed him gently. It was not a kiss of love, or a kiss of longing. It was not a kiss meant to retrieve all that faded away. It was simply a kiss to say, 'I remember. I remember all that we had, all that we loved. Thank you. Goodbye.'

I pulled away and he did not try to stop me. There was an ache in my chest; an ache of regret. It hurt but it was better than the emptiness that had haunted us for so long. As I walked away from the tree, from Teddy, I wondered if we could have done anything differently, if we couldn't have somehow made this work. In the beginning it had been perfect, so where did it fall apart? But maybe, in the end, it was as simple as that we had loved each other so much that we did not leave room for anything else. We had been completely wrapped up in one another while world continued to turn around us and as that initial love faded we found that we had matured and changed without even realizing it. The children we once were had gone, but we continued to play their games, holding on to something that no longer existed. And love on its own, without friendship, without curiosity, without growing and changing cannot keep itself alive, just as a flame needs wood to burn.


End file.
